Du Bois and Consciousness

Abstract

In his essay on ‘The Conservation of Races’, W. E. B. Du Bois (1897) directs himself to African-Americans and insists, ‘[I]t is our duty to conserve our physical powers, our intellectual endowments, our spiritual ideals; as a race we must strive by race organisation, by race solidarity, by race unity to that broader humanity which freely recognises differences but sternly deprecates inequalities in their opportunities of development.’ As this quotation intimates, and as previous chapters have insisted, W. E. B. Du Bois bequeaths us a rich body of work with which we can theorise minority social formations that strive for an elevation of their civic status, specifically through an incorporation of their ‘difference’ into prevailing citizenship practices. This chapter will substantiate this assertion and elaborate how Du Bois makes a unique contribution to the study of Muslims and citizenship in Britain.